A good friend and a backpack - what else do you need?

A lot of weeks have gone by so fast and a LOT has happened since my last post, but this time I will concentrate only on the events of last week – now that the memories of our absolutely fabulous trip are still fresh!

Some time ago my friend Elina and I got the idea of doing a round trip in the South-European countries, and the perfect opportunity for that was provided by the week-long holiday (Whitsun break) from the university last week. We had planned quite a tight schedule with the ambitious goal of visiting four countries (or five including the Vatican) in only ten days. That meant of course a lot of time spending in buses, trains and plains but I have to say it was all worth the trouble (and the money…).

5.6 -7.6 Marseille, France

We headed off with a night train from Freiburg to Marseilles and what a feeling it was to wake up at 5.30 to see the beautiful sunrise by the coast of the Mediterranean through the train window.

So nice of my friend to take the first picture of the trip while I was asleep -
luckily the sleeping pictures are always the prettiest ones ;)

On our first day in Marseilles we visited the Notre Dame de la Garde which was standing on a hill and provided a great view over the city and the coast. On our way there, a funny old French gentleman apparently got the idea that we were lost or too afraid to cross the street (we were only reading the map) and for the rest of our walk to the church he walked ahead of us, stopping the cars by holding out his hand in front of the cars and then gesturing us to follow him.  

Notre Dame de la Garde

 

This was not the only time on our trip when we got some extra help without asking for it (not saying we didn’t ask for help many, many times) – I guess it’s not always a bad thing to look a bit lost. On that very same day we met a few other very friendly people, including a group of young men at a bar called Le Petit Nice, who got very excited about giving us tips where to go the next day.  That night it was the first time after leaving Finland in April that we had the possibility to drink cider! Although the apple cider was not exactly the best I’ve had (or even close), it was a very nice change to all the cheap white wine.

Ah, cider!

All in all, Marseilles was a very nice city (a little less so in the night time though) that with all its light-coloured buildings actually made us feel like we would have been in Morocco. I was surprised how friendly all the people in the southern France were and also about the fact that many of them spoke English! (And yes, I confess having some stereotypes of this country… In my defence, the nice guys told us that things are very different in Paris.) 

Take away -coffee  French style. And I asked for a big one.

 

The inner yard of our hostel - this place was so cute! In addition to that,
the personnel of the hostel was overly friendly.

Palais de Longchamp - a tip from the local guys we had met the previous night.
It was really worth seeing!

Ah, beach! At Plage du Prophete.

The old city at night time.

8.6-10.6 Andorra

On Sunday we took the train to Toulouse where we had 7 hours to spend before our departure to Andorra by bus. The weather was crazy hot and in the search of a shady place to eat our packed lunch we wound up in a very strange hippie-part of the town. We took also a bit longer walk (also because we got a bit lost…) and once again found some pétanque-playing French people.

We escaped the hot weather  to a café...

The university library in Toulouse

Late at night we finally arrived to Andorra la Vella which is the capital of Andorra with only 22.000 inhabitants. I was superexcited about visiting this miniature state for many reasons, but most of all because of the mountains! <3
For those who are not so well acquainted with this cute little country, I can tell that Andorra is a very popular resort among slalom skiers, cyclers and hikers.The official language is Catalan.

                            

The city center of Andorra La Vella

Hihi, funny cows in Andorra...

On Monday we decided to go jogging/hiking in the mountains. We jogged all the way to the next village which was about 6 km from the capital. The views were absolutely breath-taking!

 

The next village and the destination of our hike: La Massana

On our way back to Andorra la Vella we got some company from the cutest 7-month-old French bulldog and his owners. Needless to say, this made me miss my dogs so much, but at the same time made the day even better than it already was.  

                          

I was so happy!

10.6-12.6 Calella, Spain

On Tuesday afternoon we arrived to our actual beach holiday resort Calella, and the temperature being more or less +30 headed straight to the beach which was only 200 meters from our hotel. Oh the lovely sea! It had been such a long time since I had swum in the ocean so the feeling was pretty good.

Calella is a very, very small town on the northern coast of Spain and it didn’t take long before we realized that it was one of the most popular holiday resorts among the Germans. So hearing only German around you didn’t actually give the feeling of being in Spain, not to mention how many times we were thought to be Germans (which didn’t feel like such a positive thing after seeing how the German tourists acted - but I'm not saying Finns are any better…!). And after noticing that an Oktoberfest was going to take place at our hotel that night, we didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. We decided to escape that to a club which – of course – turned out to be full of 18-year-old German students…

The next day included some more laying in the beach but also cycling along the beautiful Spanish coast.

On Thursday morning before leaving to the airport we went for a morning swim in the sea – the water and the air had to be pretty warm already at that time since I didn’t freeze at all and didn’t even miss the sauna (and that takes a lot)!

At 7 am the beach we had the beach all to ourselves

12.6-15.6 Rome, Italy

On Thursday afternoon we arrived in our final destination, Rome, and had the luck to have Elina’s friend Markus there (doing exchange as well) to lead us from the railway station to our apartment. After hearing so many people saying how cool Rome is, our expectations were quite high. But dragging our backpacks in the +40 celsius degrees a bit tired and hungry, we didn’t feel very moved by the city and, feeling actually a bit disappointed in the evening, we told each other that for sure the next day will be great as we just see a bit more of the beautiful Rome everybody was talking about. Well, that didn’t exactly turn out to be the case. Until Rome, our trip had been simply amazing, but there we unfortunately had to face some (small) setbacks, like waiting a half an hour whether our landlord shows up to give us the keys to our apartment or not, sleeping very little due to the very hot weather and one of us coming down with a flu (Elina) the other one with a slight migraine (me) and some other small stuff related to the tourist attractions that didn’t all turn out to be as wonderful as we had expected or let alone open to the public… Pretty soon also the million tourists started to get on my nerves as they of course didn’t make the Rome feel that old and Italian. Well, Saturday was a bit better day for us and after the rain in the evening we found Rome in the end quite pretty and worth visiting.

As students we are always interested to see other universities -
this is the faculty of humanities in Rome.

The oldest cafe in Rome and the second oldest in all Italy.

Earlier in the day the Pope was making a visit and these guys would have
gladly taken us with them to see the Pope. But waiting 4 hours in the sun (+40)
didn't feel so tempting...

This what you would have needed to get to see the Pope himself.

Eventually we also had the chance to climb up the stairs of San Pietro.

We also succeeded in finding gluten-free pizza for me! As you can see in the pic,
very tired but very happy :)

Beginning of the semester

Last week was finally the time for my courses to begin. My personal curriculum for the summer consists of both German and English courses (literature, grammar, regional and culture studies), most of which seem really interesting albeit effortful and time-consuming. There is yet not so much to tell about the studying, but as much as I like the University of Freiburg, there were a few times last week when I felt a bit lost – or let me put it this way: I missed the uncomplicatedness of my home university. And I’m not only talking about the times I searched for a class room for a half an hour. First of all the libraries: I guess there are separate libraries for most of the areas of studies, then in addition to that there are two bigger libraries (of which one is tram-ride away from the university – just to make things easy for the students..) and in all of them the loaning systems vary. Some books you can loan with the loan time changing from one day to two weeks, some books you can only read there and for “loaning” some books you have to pay. Very confusing. Another thing these Germans have managed to complicate is printing at the university – and with all my literature classes I will be needing the printer a lot. The system is anything but simple, involving different passwords and sending files from a computer to another, and so I had to give up on printing the first time I tried last week or I would have been late for my class. But I intend to give it another try today. This time I’ll take some extra patience with me.

The beginning of the semester brought some rhythm into this rather spontaneous life I’ve been enjoying here so far, but of course there are plenty of other things going on as well. I guess parties are a pretty obvious part, but I’ve also spent a lot of time with the other exchange students cooking Italian and Finnish food, grilling, jogging and doing sports, visiting the great Cathedral here and going to the cinema! I will let pictures do the talking:

  

 

Cooking Italian style

 

A Finnish lunch at our place.

Grillabend

A visit to the lovely Japanese garden nearby my home.

In the Japanese garden with the lovely Fransesca.

 

New people, new languages, new skills..

One part of the university

I know I haven’t exactly been the most active blog writer lately but I will try to mend my ways. As I already mentioned in my latest post, last week we had the welcome days at the university which meant getting to know a lot of new people. Surprisingly enough Finns are the second largest group among the exchange students right after the loud and lively Italians, and so last week we found the fifth Finn Heini and rumor has it there are still four to be found. Anyway, I’m pretty sure I will leave here in August speaking also some more Italian then what I’ve learned from Elisa di Rivombrosa...
What’s at the same time a bit amusing, annoying and most of all confusing, is the mixing of languages in my speech now that I’ve been talking more English with the exchange students. Many of them speak fluent German whereas a few speak for now very little or none, which means changing the language according to the members of the conversation. So you can imagine that after meeting a bunch of new people within just a couple of days, it was not only troublesome to try to avoid asking for someone’s name, nationality or major for the third time but also to remember in which language we last had our conversation. So it’s not only once that I’ve started a nice conversation in German only realizing after a moment of silence and a very confused look that I had chosen the wrong language and the other person had not just understood a word I said.

The sight of Freiburg from Schlossberg

Well, back to activities. Here in our student dormitory there is not only great opportunities for doing sports or having a picnic, but also parties on a weekly basis in a house which is for free time use only and located right next to our building. So on Wednesday I got to experience something that, as far as I know, has not yet reached Finland – a Déjà vu -party! I just admire the inventor of this simple but brilliant idea: every drink you’ve bought before midnight you will get for free after midnight! (Mom if you read this, I don’t want you to worry – this party takes place only once in a month…)
Another great thing about the parties here in our dormitory is billiard! This is the first time in my life that I’ve played billiard (two times here now) and I don’t understand why I haven’t done that before. I just love the game! Lucky me I have the chance to play it here every week almost for free. Isn’t that what student exchange is for, learning new skills…?

Speaking of games, on Sunday I took part in playing soccer with other international students. There was not really much going on here at Easter (which gave me the chance to get some rest), many students were spending the holidays for travelling and so we had only 6 players this time. But it was so much fun! Although I don’t have that much experience in playing soccer, nor do I enjoy watching it on TV too much, I do love to play it. And if the billiard wasn’t already great enough, playing soccer is also possible every week!

 My days here have been quite filled all kinds of activities, hanging out with friends and trying to get my courses and studies organized, but on Easter I had some time to just take it easy and spend some time just by myself as well. It was nice for a change, but on the other hand I also had more time to think about what is going on in Finland and how my family and friends are doing. And my dogs. I miss them so much. I’ve dreamed about them, I’ve talked about them and I’ve shed a few tears watching pictures of them. It’s weird living here without them for the first time, although the fact that I have roommates helps a lot since there usually is always someone home – only a few days ago I noticed how fond I am of their company. 

There is nothing more important I could have on my wall.